Premanufactured buildings, such as mobile homes, trailers, prefabricated houses, and the like are manufactured at a central manufacturing site, and upon completion the buildings are moved to a location where they are to be permanently located and occupied. Because these buildings are designed to be easily moved from the manufacturing site to the permanent location, they are not originally built on a permanent foundation at the manufacturing site, but on a pair of parallel I-beam joists, and then the manufactured building is transported to and mounted upon piers, such as concrete blocks, pilings or stabilizing jacks, at a site where the building will be used. It is important that the building also be anchored in position on the piers, so as to avoid the building being shifted off of its piers by strong winds or earth tremors. A building inadvertently shifted off of its piers can cause serious damage to the building and also can cause human injury.
Various types of stabilizing devices have been used to stabilize the manufactured buildings, to keep the buildings from moving in response to wind forces and earth movement, such as guy wires, straps or other ties which connect the building to anchors or ground fixtures. A traditional approach to providing lateral wind protection for manufactured buildings consists of an anchor having a shaft with one or more helical plates at the bottom of the shaft which can be rotated to move into the earth, and cold-rolled steel strapping installed as diagonal ties between the upper exposed portion of the anchor and the lower main frame of the manufactured building. A system of this type is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 3,747,288. In addition, vertical or "over-the-top" ties may be installed in case of single-wide structures.
The vertical support for manufactured buildings usually is provided by piers, such as concrete masonry piers, prefabricated steel piers, or precast concrete jack stands located under the parallel joists of the main frame of the manufactured building, with the vertical supports being spaced longitudinally along the parallel joists at approximately 8' from one another.
While much attention has been placed on protecting the building from movement due to lateral wind forces, little effort has been placed on protecting the building from movement due to longitudinal wind forces. However, these longitudinal wind forces must be accounted for in order to prevent the building from shifting off the piers during periods of high wind exposure.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a system which protects a manufactured building from horizontal movement along its length relative to the support piers due to longitudinal wind forces.